Sports training aids are a multi-billion dollar market worldwide. Many such aids are specifically geared toward aiding individuals in sports involving the swinging of sporting equipment, such as golf clubs, hockey sticks and tennis rackets, while contacting respective objects, such as a golf ball, a hockey puck/ball and a tennis ball. A major limitation of many existing aids is that while they may provide an indication to the user that something about their swing is wrong, they don't provide an immediate indication to the user of what specific characteristic of their swing is causing the problem. Sports mats are popular as training aids for various sporting activities. For instance, golf mats are commonly used by golf enthusiasts to hit golf balls on a driving range, into a golf net, etc. In that case, the golfer may obtain some limited feedback based upon the flight direction/path and trajectory of the golf ball. For instance, a golfer may see that a golf ball was hooked, sliced, had a bad trajectory, wrong distance, etc. However, since there are many factors that contribute to determine the ball flight the user is left guessing as to what swing variable(s) caused the problem. Consequently, absent the assistance of another experienced trainer/teacher, or high tech video equipment, the individual is left to the very imperfect science of trial and error. Accordingly, many such existing training aids make it very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to self-diagnose their swing.
In order to perfect one's swing, an individual will often hire a trainer or coach to assist in diagnosing or analyzing the players swing. This can involve direct observation of the player by the trainer and/or sometime videotaping the swing for later reference and analysis. Both of these are useful to a player but costly and require repeated visits to the trainer.
Thus, there exists a need for a personal training device which enables a player to receive immediate feedback on the nature of the swing while practicing in the comfort of their own home, without requiring the high cost of a human trainer and/or expensive video/electronic equipment. More particularly, there exists a need for a practice aid, such as a practice mat for sports involving the contact of an object off of a ground surface, or a practice racket for sports involving contacting an object during flight above a ground surface, which provides immediate visual feedback to the user with regard to important swing variables. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to provide such an aid that provides a temporary non-permanent visual indication, such that the aid can be used repeatedly. In the case of sports involving ground-struck objects, it would be advantageous for the practice mat to provide an immediate visual display of the entire contact surface area made between the equipment and the mat during the swing, which immediately visually conveys important swing characteristics to the user (e.g., the angle of a golf club face or hockey stick blade at impact and the swing direction through impact). In the case of racket-related sports, such as tennis, racquetball, badminton, etc., it would be equally advantageous to provide such a temporary visual indication of characteristics relating to the location of impact on the racquet strings vis-à-vis the racquet face, and the position/orientation of the racquet face at impact.
These and other aspects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent from the attached drawings and the detailed description of the preferred embodiments, which follow.